By continuing to use the site or forum, you agree to the use of cookies, find out more by reading our GDPR policy.

Banking Trojans and Shady Apps Galore In Google Play

Despite Google's defenses for protecting Android's official marketplace, cybercriminals still manage to sneak in a banking Trojan, or two, or three, security researchers have discovered. Recently, security researchers from different security companies based in Europe disclosed on Twitter that they found several banking Trojans in Google Play. Lukas Stefanko of ESET antivirus vendor found three such malicious apps posing as astrology software that offered the horoscope. What they really divined, though, was theft of SMS and call logs, sending text messages in the victim’s name, downloading and installing apps without user approval, and stealing banking credentials. Before tweeting his findings, Stefanko reported the offensive entries to Google, who booted them from the store; but by the time of the removal, one of them had been downloaded more than 1,000 times, and over 500 users had added the other two to their Android devices. One of the malicious apps, which Stefanko noticed in its code that had been named Herobot, displayed a fake warning saying that it was incompatible and has been removed as a result. The malware remained on the device and acted in the background, requesting banking targets based on the apps present on the device. The malware researcher said that the command and control (C2) server was still alive when he tweeted about it. An important aspect is that all three Trojans discovered by Stefanko enjoyed a low detection rate. At the time of writing, the malware piece with the highest detection rate on VirusTotal was recognized by 12 out of 60 antivirus products; for the least detected one, only six saw its true colors. Complete details can be found on OUR FORUM.